Magnussen: Not much left in the car

Kevin Magnussen believes he extracted the maximum from the McLaren MP4-29 after finishing in eighth place in the United States Grand Prix.

Magnussen, racing at the Circuit of the Americas for the first time, stopped on the opening lap and made just one more pit stop for fresh tyres and preserved his rubber to collect four points.

"Eighth position isn’t a fantastic result, but I honestly don’t think we could have got much more out of the car this afternoon," he said.

"It’s a shame that Jenson [Button] lost out on a points finish at the end – I guess he must have run out of tyres – but I was fortunate enough to be slightly farther up the road, which enabled me to keep ahead of the cars chasing me down. Fortunately, therefore, I didn’t lose out too much.

"I can’t be too unhappy with today’s result, but it’s not really been a weekend for the team to remember. Still, we now head straight to Brazil for another grand prix in just a few days’ time – I’m really looking to driving at Interlagos, which looks like a fantastic racetrack, and I very much hope we can have a better weekend there."

"I just went backwards today," he said. "The only fun bit of the afternoon was my fight with Fernando [Alonso]. But, apart from that, it was pretty dull out there.

"It’s unusual for our car to suffer tyre degradation as damaging as we did today, and I experienced particularly significant issues with the rears. Their surface temperatures were getting really hot, yet their core temperatures were dropping. That meant we were slipping and sliding around, and as a result I was really struggling compared with the drivers around me."